Summer is almost here. With it will come warm weather, beaches, ice cream and of course, the LT summer reading program. Students leaving LT for the summer are handed a list of books and are told that they have to read one. Many don’t. When school resumes, some teachers almost completely ignore the books, while others spend weeks focusing on them. The system is imperfect, to say the least. Maybe its biggest shortcoming is a lack of quality choices.

Some of last year’s books look more like dime store paperback novels, not like literature. While some classics made an appearance—“The Once and Future King” or “The Maltese Falcon” were impressive choices—how many students chose them? Or did they just settle for another cheap love-story paperback from that guy who does those funny history videos?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with occasional light reading. I’m a big fan of Tom Clancy and his ghostwriters, along with Brad Thor and other fictional authors, but this is fluff reading—the enjoyable but hardly healthy junk food of literature. Why does summer reading treat all books like they are created equally when they are obviously not? Celebrity biographies may introduce a nonreader to reading, but they will not turn a nonreader into a reader.

But I understand the choices for the summer reading books. In the age of digital neon lights and six-second attention spans, it’s hard to get anyone to pick up a newspaper, let alone a large book, and the problem is this: Many students simply will not read assigned summer reading if it does not interest them, and classics aren’t always the most interesting.

However, there’s an easy solution. Instead of forcing kids to read full, dull books, give them a short literary smorgasbord. A Winston Churchill speech, a Ray Bradbury short story, a Rudyard Kipling poem and a little bit of Mary Shelley, combined with a book that is interesting to students that they choose to read would do much more for advancing reading comprehension and intangible reading skills than reading Tina Fey’s memoirs would do.

Some students and teachers oppose summer reading. I am all for it, if it is revised. Its critics point out that no other class requires students to work during the summer. Do we have a math unit to cover? A science topic to learn? How about an era in history? No, but there’s a reason why reading is so important. A study by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has found that employers rank reading and writing deficiencies as top concerns when hiring new employees, and good readers have better opportunities for career growth and generally higher salaries. Reading keeps the mind sharp. Obviously, there is room for growth and LT students should take advantage of it. If we want to excel, we need to read, and LT has a responsibility to help boost its graduates to the top.

Reading good literature can also help developing writers. Will a basketball star’s book demonstrate the correct way to write, or would students be better off with Ernest Hemingway? You wouldn’t turn to Hemingway for lessons on how to play basketball, would you?

The NEA also found correlations between reading habits and test scores. Reading raises comprehensive scores on standardized tests. If we read more and better literature, our future opens up.

So, even if the summer reading list this year is the same as it has been in years past, let’s do two things: We can try to change it for years to come and we can still read. It’s your future if you do, it’s your lack of one if you don’t.